Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.03
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
Q. Is that the very reputable German historian too.
A. A very reputable German historian, who, in fact, looked
at ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you challenge these figures,
I think now is the time to do so. I do not know whether
you do or you do not.
MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not in a position to challenge them
on a numerical basis, but I do wish to plant or implant
doubts in your Lordship's mind as to the rigour with which
the figures have been arrived at, shall I put it like
that? All I have to establish, if I have understood it
correctly, in your Lordship's mind is the position that
I am entitled, as a writer myself, not to be called a
Holocaust denier because I question figures. I can put it
as simply as that. Your Lordship has a different take on
that, I ought to be told it now perhaps in order that I can ----
. P-19
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure about "ought", but I understand
the
way you use this evidence.
MR IRVING: I mean, this is not a court of law, criminal
law,
where they are trying somebody for murder. We are
just
trying to establish a matter of Holocaust denial
really
which is a different standard of proof, I think.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
A. Would it be helpful if I said a little bit about how
Schafler arrived at his figures?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it might be in the sense that
Mr Irving is really saying, "Well, I question the
figures"
and I think he must by implication be saying, "and I
have
good grounds for questioning the figures". So I think
if
you wanted to add something about the way in which the
figures were arrived at, I think that would be
helpful.
A. Yes, the figures for each of the camps he did by
trying to
trace the ghetto liquidations at the different periods
into which camps they were sent. So we have a very
accurate reduction of the Lodz population, which
trains
went to Chelmno, when, and we can come very accurately
to
the number of people deported from Lodz to Chelmno,
then
one is on a little bit less secure grounds for the
various
other surrounding towns where we do not have a day by
day
deduction or a train by train calculation, but we do
have
statistics of what the populations were there before
the
whole operation began.
. P-20
So with some rough estimate of how many
would
have been selected for labour, he came to a figure for
Lodz as a minimum figure and then a more probable but
not
putting forward as necessarily a somewhat higher
figure.
He did the same calculations for the other camps.
We know how many Dutch transports went to
Sobibor. We know which regions were cleared that were
directed to Sobibor. We had the figures of the Jewish
populations in those ghettos before the liquidation
and
the number of workers that were shifted to some of the
work camps, and it was on the calculation, on that
basis
that he arrived at his figures.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful.
MR IRVING: Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do ask anything you want, Mr Irving.
MR IRVING: I think this is probably an appropriate point
to
ask the witness about the atmosphere in Germany for
historians. Is it possible for an historian in
Germany
now, whether reputable or disreputable historian, to
advance opposing hypotheses in any degree of safety?
A. Oh, absolutely. For instance, in this court earlier I
saw
in the transcript you said that no one could refer to
the
Himmler guidelines without risking that -- the
intercept
of the Himmler guidelines, and, of course, Christian
Jerloch has published that in Germany, and has
suffered
absolutely no repercussions and there is no question
that
. P-21
he would, that there is a very vigorous discussion
among
German historians on the Holocaust.
Q. But would I be right in saying this discussion is
skewed
or distorted by the fact that anybody who goes to the
other end of the spectrum, shall we say, and starts
saying, "I think the figures are much lower because,
for
example, it was not a systematic liquidation" or
anything
like that, anybody who accidentally says one of the
taboo
phrases in Germany is going to end up in trouble, in
prison, and that this must certainly cast
apprehensions in
the mind of somebody about which side of the debate he
takes?
A. I think that is nonsense. For instance, Hans Monson
shares your view that Hitler did not give an order.
Q. Would you tell the court who Hans Monson is?
A. Hans Monson is a very notable historian at the
University
of Bochum, now retired boss tonne.
Q. He is not a Holocaust denier, is he?
A. You asked me with taboos and one of the things that
has
generally been seen that you have been identified with
is
the argument that Hitler did not make the decision.
Hans
Monson and Martin Broszat have accepted or have argued
that Hitler did not give an order or a decision----
Q. Can I just halt you there? It would be useful if you
would----
A. I am still talking.
. P-22
MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are interrupting a little bit,
Mr Irving. Try and restrain yourself until the end of
the
answer.
MR IRVING: Your Lordship will know why I want to interrupt
there.
A. Far from being thrown in jail or fearing, Hans Monson
currently is the Shapiro Visiting Scholar at the
United
States Holocaust Museum. There is a wide of range of
debate covering a wide spectrum of opinion. There is
in
Germany a law that outlaws Holocaust denial, but I
know of
no German historian that I have come across that has
lost
a night's sleep worrying that this prevents him from
arguing from documents and from carrying out a full
academic discussion.
Q. Have you heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann?
A. I have heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann. I know him.
Q. Are you familiar with the course of his career after
he
made certain statements? Was he originally a
historian at
the free university in Berlin?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think this is a digression
really.
MR IRVING: Very well. Would you explain to the court then
who
Professor Martin Broszat was? Was he an eminent
German
historian?
A. Yes. He was the head of the Institute for
Contemporary
History in Munich.
. P-23
Q. His opinion on my hypothesis that Hitler did not issue
an
order or that there is no Hitler order, are you
familiar
with that?
A. He takes your view that Hitler did not know of this,
or
that it was kept secret from him, or he would not have
authorized it. That it was done by others behind his
back
he does not accept. He does not think that Hitler
gave an
order for or made a decision for the Final Solution,
but
that rather he ----
Q. It just happened?
A. He encouraged it, he instigated it in the sense that
he
made known his feelings and that others clamoured, or
strove to gain Brownie points to get credit by
realising
the programme that Hitler hinted that he wanted to see
done.
Q. Are you familiar with the word Verliegenheitslosung, a
way
out of an awkward solution, a way out of an awkward
problem?
A. He used the phrase that it was a way out of a
Sackgasse,
out of a dead end.
Q. He picked up this word from the introduction to my
book
and said this was probably correct. Are you familiar
with
that?
A. I do not know if he picked that expression up from
your
book, but he did. In so far as the issue of the
Hitler
order, Monson and Broszat have argued for a long time,
as
. P-24
you have, they do not think that Hitler gave an
explicit
or formal order.
Q. It would be a grave injustice to call either of those
two
professors Holocaust deniers, would it not?
A. Yes. The argument over whether Hitler gave an order or
not
is not commonly part of the issue of Holocaust denial.
Q. Thank you very much for saying that. Hans Monson,
would
you identify him? Is he a Professor at the Royal
university in Bochum?
A. Yes, he was. He is retired.
Q. A very eminent historian, is that correct?
A. Yes.
Q. Very well. I hope your Lordship pardons me for having
made that little excursion?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You picked up the answer that
Professor
Browning gave about whether denying Hitler's having
given
an order was an aspect of Holocaust denial, but I do
not
think the Defendants really say that it is.
MR RAMPTON: We do not.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was checking your summary of case.
MR RAMPTON: The Hitler exculpation, exoneration, apology
part
of the case has nothing to do with Holocaust denial at
all. They may have a similar motive at the end of the
day
but that is completely different. We have focused on
Hitler's exoneration to prove what we call distorted
history.
. P-25
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think what you do say is that it
is
part of Holocaust denial to deny that there was a
systematic programme.
MR RAMPTON: Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the same as denying that it
was
Hitler who instigated that programme.
MR RAMPTON: That is right. It is number 3, no systematic
programme of exterminating Europe's Jews, whether on
the
part of Hitler or the Nazi leadership.
A. I think that Professors Monson and Broszat would say
that
Hitler instigated it in various ways. They would
simply
say there was no formal order or decision in the sense
that we understand that is the way ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that yourself.
A. Yes.
MR IRVING: Is this the debate between the intentionalists
and
the functionalists?
A. It is one aspect of that debate.
Q. By instigating it, would you say that Hitler
instigated it
by raising the climate of anti-semitism in Germany, or
was
it more specific than that?
A. I think that was the beginning of it, but it gets also
more specific than that when one continually indicates
that you want this whole problem to disappear, that
you
want a settlement to this. You prophesy a
disappearance
of the Jews, which is in a sense to set the climate in
. P-26
which people are to come forward to you with proposals
which you then can approve or not. We know the
pattern
that Himmler comes to Hitler in mid September with the
proposals for the ethnic cleansing of western Poland.
Q. September 1939?
A. He comes to Hitler. They bring the Madagascar plan to
Hitler. They bring proposals about marking and
deportation to Hitler. In terms of concrete proposals
Hitler is not the micromanager, but the proposals are
a
response to the signals that he gives of what he wants
and
wants done, and this is what I would say we would call
instigation.
Q. You refer to his prophesy, that was the speech of
January
30th 1939?
A. That is one example.
Q. That was January 30th 1939. Did the killings start
immediately?
A. No. That is a prophesy that could be realised in a
number
of ways.
Q. Nothing really happened for about three years, did it?
A. No. I would not interpret that as understood yet as
total
destruction. But when this does not work and there
still
needs to be -- that is, expulsion, ethnic cleansing,
does
not work, the reservation plans prove to be
impractical,
then the demand that something be done is still there,
and
then one brings more extreme points.
. P-27
Q. How realistic was the Madagascar plan to which you
just
referred?
A. Do I think they took it seriously? Yes, I do think
they
took it seriously. It is fantastic but of course
Auschwitz is fantastic, too.
Q. In what way is Madagascar a fantastic plan?
A. Fantastic in the sense that one is bizarre, the notion
that you could take 4 million Jews and put them on
ships
and send them to Madagascar, and that anything other
than
the vast bulk of them would die under the conditions
of
being dumped into the jungle of Madagascar. Even that
a
plan that clearly in its implications involved vast
decimation, they still talked in these words of
resettlement.

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